5 Druids - 1 bear, 4 moonkins

[Tinpah]

Hi folks,

I already own 2 druids (and some other classes), all of them in their
70ies already. I have decided to try somenthing new (at least for me)
and so I started to box 5 druids.

Of course it may be a bit too early, but I like to think ahead and
so I started to write down what I am planning to do and how I want to
play.

The following thoughts ar for group quests and 5 man instances.

I would appreciate your comments and ideas on my thoughts, and please
excuse my English, I am giving my best, but it is not my maternal-language.

Cheers,
Tinpah
(+Tinpeh, Tinpih, Tinpoh, Tinpuh)


Group-setup:
1 x Bear
4 x Moonkin (balance skilled, but in caster form)


Legend:
X = Enemy
x = Enemy adds
B = Bear
M = Moonkin
() = used for keys
[] = used for abilities and macros


Positioning:
xXxx
B

M M M M


Keys, abilities and macros used infight:
(1): B: [Ability Feral Charge] X
M: [Macro: /target focustarget]

(2): B: [Ability: Demoralizing Roar]
M: [Macro: /target focus; cast Rejuvenation; /targetlasttarget;]

(3): B: [Ability: Swipe]
M: [Ability: Insect Swarm]

(4): B: [Ability: Mangle]
M: [Ability: Moonfire]

(5): B: [Ability: Lacerate]
M: [Ability: Starfire]

(Alt-F1): M: [Macro: /target party1; /cast Regrowth; /targetlasttarget;]
[...]
(Alt-F5): M: [Macro: /target party5; /cast Regrowth; /targetlasttarget;]


Changing the focus:
Bind F1 to F5 to a macro, that changes the focus. In case your main
dies, you change the focus to one of your toons and keep controlling
the rest of your pack from the corresponding toon's window.

(F1): /focus party1
[...]
(F5): /focus party5


Explanations:
We dont fight in moonkin form most of the time, since healing the
bear is part of the rotation, and healing makes us pop out of
moonkin-form anyways and changing back would be too mana-consuming.

If we expect a short fight, the bear and all moonkins may stay in
moonkin-form and skip key (2).

We use targetting through the focus only in the beginning of the
fight (key 1) to be able to cycle through targets with the bear
while still being focussed on one target with the moonkins.


Fighting:
a) (1), (2), (3), (4), then spam (5) until Rejuvenation runs out.
b) Repeat (2) to (5) until target is dead.

When target ist dead, change to new mob with Bear and jump to (a),
altough the bear will not charge, this is needed to give the
moonkins their new target.

In case your bear dies, change the focus (as described above) and
go into bear form with the toon that acts as tank now. Either you
prepare macros for that or you do it with your mouse.

In case one of your toons needs an emergency heal, hit ALT+ the
group-member's F-button.


ToDo:
- Basic crowd-control. Maybe whirlwind every enemy but the
maintarget once and nuke down the first enemy? Need more
ideas before I start this.
- Enhance healing strategies.
- Use trees.
- Pull with hurricane strategy.
- 2 moonkin-form and 2 caster-form DD strategy

[Kyudo]

Seems a pity to have 4x moonkin and not one moonkin aura.

[Mak]

I am planning on a 5x druid team and here's what I was planning on doing.

1x Feral Druid, 3x Balance Druid, 1x Resto Druid

I figured then I could at least have a balanced group for PVE and could easily respec the feral to balance to tear it up on the BGs. Moonkin aura is awesome so you should definitely keep at least one in that form. Also, if they're healing, doesn't it just make sense to make one Resto? They definitely heal better than a Boomkin and you can leave the others in that form. Just my two cents. Good luck with your team.

[MageaMageb]

I would definitely go with one feral, three boomkin, one resto.

With a tank, three dps and a healer, you could probably handle pretty much anything.

Hell, with the way Druids are these days, you could make them all resto and still do extremely well.

Either way you can't fail with five druids.

Or four, for that matter :D

[Tinpah]

When you hit heroics - just have extra macros setup to have all four support druids (3x balance, 1x resto) drop HoTs on the tank. You'll need it when gearing up. :)
That's exactly why I wanted to play without the moonkin-aura, an issue that some of the posters here mentioned. It WILL be necessary to hot the tank with more than one druide, and this toon WILL lose moonkin form.

Another option would be to play with 1 tree, one moonkin and leave two of the supporting toons in caster form. Thus I keep the aura for my 2 casters and the +heal from the tree-buff.

Thanks for your input, guys, you showd my a perspective, I haven't been thinking about before.

Cheers,
Tinpah

[Gallo]

I know that its intuitive to have your feral charge be the same key as /target focustarget, but for simplicity, I suggest just making all your moonkin spells like this:

/cast [target=focustarget] Moonfire or whatever. Makes it so you dont have to hit that key again every time you change targets or lose targets.

[Eteocles]

Fur you DID keep the statues up right? :P They're the key to that fight and rank1 rejuv works on them lol

[btcorrad]

Fighting:
a) (1), (2), (3), (4), then spam (5) until Rejuvenation runs out.
b) Repeat (2) to (5) until target is dead.

I'm new and a little confused. Aren't keys 1-5 being keycloned? How do you only pass 2 and 5 seperately to the boomkins while using 1-5 on main? Is and alt or ctrl or shift combination being used here?

[Mono]

Before I took up multiboxing my main was a moonkin.

I think you should keep one moonkin out of the healing rotation. With four of five party members exclusively casting, you're gonna see a good return on that. That one moonkin would be doing more damage than the rest of them, so in the event that the tank loses aggro, the mob is going straight for the Moonkin with his 400% armor instead of the other balance druids. The moonkin has just a bit more survivability, and thus gives your tank more opportunity to take back the mob.

ALSO: I would love to see a set of moonkins macroed to cast Force of Nature x 4 simultaneously. In fact, in PVP that would be pretty funny to pull out on any class that can't crowd control 12 mobs at once.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Suggestion: keep them all feral until your 50s. You won't see much boomkin gear until outlands that's worth a damn. Once you hit 50, start picking up the int/+dmg leather/cloth and switch at 52-54ish. I did this on my shammies and it was much easier than leveling in cloth crap.

[Valorin]

Actually, you don't need to go feral to level as typical with solo druids because you can x5 one-shot anything regardless of gear. My boomkins are now level 61 and I FINALLY replaced some lvl 28 boots I got in Gnomer!!

Anyway, I've been experimenting with the Panzerkin aka Chicken Tank. I keep my one moonkin aura and the other four heal. I have been planning to turn one into a tree possibly if I lose too much dps by having all 4 heal instead of just needing one good heal. One thing about the panzerkin is that the synergy with the other four is awesome. And so far I've been tanking pretty well in instances with my guildies. The problem with panzerkins is that they are hard to use and take a lot of skill - no taunts + mana problems. However, I found a nice fix to the typical mana problems: x4 rotated Innervates!

A few of us are trying the x5 druid, keep us informed how you come along.